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Euripides The Trojan Women

Decent Essays

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill once asserted that “history is written by the victors.” Indeed, when Athenian troops first invaded the tiny, neutral island of Melos during the prolonged Peloponnesian War, few native Greeks protested against the violent incursion. However, when Euripides, the third of the Greek tragic poets, developed “The Trojan Women” months after the deadly attack, Greek citizens were presented with a perspective of war unlike any other. Although Euripides’ production is centered on the mythical Trojan War, it was recognized by Greek citizens as a clear condemnation of the invasion that had just taken place the year before. Even today, “The Trojan Women” is widely regarded as an anti-war composition that focuses on the terrors and irrationality of …show more content…

Euripides intentionally employs graphic imagery to convey the inhumanity of war and thus evoke a wide range of emotion from his audience. Near the beginning of the play, Poseidon observes that “blood drips down from the gods’ shrines” as he passes through the devastated city where Troy once proudly stood (Euripides 31). Evidently, the Greek soldiers had exercised such depravity during battle that they had resorted to slaughtering and raping innocent civilians in consecrated temples. This despicable act surely would have upset Euripides' largely religious audience, who would not have condoned such immorality, regardless of the circumstances. Euripides uses this same literary device to evoke pathos when he describes the death of Astyanax. When Andromache is first informed of her baby son’s fate, she cries out, “Why hold me with your hands so fast, cling so fast to me? You little bird, flying to hide beneath my wings” (Euripides 64). By creating an image of a little child, hardly developed beyond babyhood, clinging desperately to his mother in the same way a hatchling might seek shelter in its mother’s

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